Iraq attacks injure 10 U.S. troops

Ambushes reinforce belief that forces loyal to Saddam are reorganizing

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER NEWS SERVICES

Published 10:00 pm, Monday, June 16, 2003

MUSHAHEDA, Iraq -- Days after the U.S. military said it had completed a successful operation to quell an insurgency in a region north of Baghdad, at least 10 U.S. soldiers were wounded in two incidents near the same area Sunday afternoon, a military spokesman said yesterday.

The military played down the severity of the fighting, but the number of wounded is among the highest for a single day since the official end to the war.

The two rocket-propelled grenade attacks reinforced the belief that loyalists of Saddam Hussein were reorganizing. It underscored the difficulty that U.S. forces face in rooting out persistent Iraqi resistance that over the past few weeks has killed 10 U.S. soldiers.

Residents of homes raided in the past two days warned that the U.S. operations were only fueling hostility and anti-U.S. attacks.

The latest ambushes came Sunday, when a convoy of trucks and armored vehicles with the 3-7 Cavalry, assigned to the 4th Brigade of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, came under fire from rocket-propelled grenades in Mushaheda as the group traveled on the main highway. The village is about 30 miles north of Baghdad.

Two soldiers were seriously wounded, though their injuries were not life-threatening, and six others suffered minor injuries, the U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said.

Another unit of U.S. soldiers met grenade fire in the village of Dujayl, six miles north of here on the same road, and two soldiers were lightly wounded.

Capt. John Morgan, the military spokesman, said, "It is amazing that no one was killed, which is because of their training and equipment."

The U.S. Central Command blamed the ambushes on hard-core loyalists of the ousted regime who "continue to put innocent civilians at risk."

Only 12 hours earlier, the military had denied that the attacks occurred at all. Petty Officer Anthony Dallas, a spokesman for Central Command in Tampa, Fla., said Sunday night after a Reuters news agency report of the skirmishes: "There was no attack. It did not happen."

A charred truck on the highway "caught fire due to mechanical failure," he said. "No Americans were injured."

Details of the attacks remain sketchy, especially from the U.S. side, except that the attack here happened around 4:30 p.m. Sunday, which Iraqi bystanders confirmed. The attack in Dujayl took place just after 5 p.m.

"We don't believe the attacks were related or coordinated," Morgan said. "But we will use our intelligence to find out who did this and take action."

Iraqis in Dujayl said they knew nothing of the assault there. But shopkeepers and others along the highway here in Mushaheda paint a picture of an ambush that touched off what they say was indiscriminate fire by the fleeing Americans.

Owners and patrons of a strip of auto parts stores here said they heard an explosion and shooting coming from the general direction of the village mosque a few hundred yards to the south on the highway.

When the Americans shot back as they sped down the road, shopkeepers said, they struck stores along the 100 yards of the strip.

The convoy moved about five miles north on the highway, where the Americans abandoned a trailer and a truck damaged by the firefight and hustled away their wounded.

About an hour later, the truck went up in flames, bystanders said. Morgan said the fire might have been caused by the damage from the attack, though that, too, remains unclear.

Makhmoud, like many in Mushaheda, adamantly denied that the village was a hotbed of resistance.

"No one here loved Saddam Hussein, because he destroyed us," he said. "They shouldn't have shot at us so randomly. There are so many innocent bystanders here."

After weeks of daily attacks, including a considerable number against the 3rd Infantry Division, U.S. soldiers are on edge. And according to Morgan, they had "a right to defend themselves and fired back."

The attacks followed the U.S. military's biggest combat operation since the war last week about 15 miles north of the villages on a peninsula of the Tigris River around the town of Balad.

The military deployed 4,000 men to round up insurgents, which resulted in 400 arrests, though most detainees were later released.

The operation spread to Baghdad yesterday: Troops from the Army's 1st Armored Division arrested 44 people, including three suspects in a June 1 grenade attack on U.S. soldiers guarding the Abu Hanifa mosque in Baghdad's Azamiyah neighborhood.

Yesterday morning, an informant rode with the raiders pointing out houses to the troops, who also used surveillance photos taken by Special Forces to pinpoint targets. Officers said they found anti-U.S. documents in the homes and seized $14,000 in both Iraqi and U.S. currency, in addition to an AK-47 assault rifle and 9mm pistol. Thirteen men were detained during the day.

During a raid last night, troops took 31 more Iraqis prisoner outside the Abu Hanifa mosque and at an outdoor cafe. Also seized were two truckloads of medical supplies that the Americans suspected were looted.

In Khaldiyah, 18 miles east of Ramadi, more than 100 military police and infantrymen in 30 Humvees and four Bradley fighting vehicles poured into the small town to raid six homes. Nine people were arrested.

U.S. commanders said the houses were identified by a prisoner who was captured Saturday after he and two other men fired RPGs at an American patrol.

Maj. Scott Bisciotti of the 1st Armored Division said anti-U.S. forces "have quite a network still in place here. We're trying to take it down one piece at a time."